Why Religion Fails

[rld]

If a God or Gods exist, I think I will challenge the premise that they care about us human living on this planet Earth.

I remember reading this example out of this classic Chinese text from this philosopher who has been made deity like figure in Daoism. (Certainly he didn't start the religion, just others had decided to take advantage of his ideas to start a reglion of a sort.) He wrote a story/example that really get you to question if God would care about us. Anyway, the story goes something like this.

There is a really really massive big bird living in the north pole, it is so big that a little jump can take it to the south pole. Imagine this bird start to take off and fly off. In this bird's eyes it would see you as individual people moving, then it would start to blurr out where an entire town just become a patch, then it will become a dot, then it will see the continent as a patch, then (probably had to be in outer space by now) see Earth as from as far as the moon or Mars. If this bird's time scale as compare to us is like 1 season of our time is maybe equivalent to 1 second to it. So, in it's eyes, all it see is the Earth change it's colour from season to season, the cloud cover goes and comes, just a beautiful looking 'ball'. Really, all it see is energy and matter shifting and changing from one end of the spectrum to the other. If there is some kind of super being exist that have super power to create, destroy or change anything in this 'existence' or 'world' or 'universe'. This super being can change all things with a snap of a finger or a blink of an eye. And this super being have a time scale like this bird does. Why would it care of the little specks on Earth that is us?

It is like why would we care about the individual ants on the ground? Cause to the ants, we are like a 'super being' with awesome power beyond their imagination....we can kill any of them at will...we can create natural disaster for them at will (flood them)......we can dug out their home and transport it to another place at will.....we can bring them food at a instant.....Are we not like God to the ants? Do you care about the lives of these individual ants or the entire colony? For most of us (unless you study ants for a living or as an hobby), you wouldn't give a damn!

So why would God care about your praying or wishes or your suffering or your happiness?

I think the concept of a God is just 'superiority' complex of the human mind. In this regard, we can compare it to the world of astronomy. We are like stuck before Galileo's time when it is the Earth that is at the center of universe.....everything revolve around it. Applying this analogy to the God concept, we are still thinking 'human kind' is the center of this universe and everything will revolve around us, that's why God have to focus his/her attention on us and take care of us or do our bidding?! Wishful thinking?!! Maybe?! Big maybe?!?! You can decide.

Pretty lame Haus.

You argument is basically, I can read God's mind and he thinks like us like we think about ants. Not much more than that. your argument is at least as "human centric" as the concept of a caring god.

Doesn't do much of a job of "disproving" that God would be interested in us.

 

[rld]

We don't need freedom of religion

If we properly respect more basic rights there is no need to grant special status to spiritual practices


[/url]

With great respect to Mr. Mercer and SMU, freedom of religion is constitutionally guarunteed, just like a number of other freedoms. His argument is so insanely broad that it could be applied to any freedom, freedom of speech, right to a speedy trial, freedom of assembly...

It is downright stupid.

 

[canada-man]

proof that religion does not make one a better person

crimes commited by religious leaders

http://www.rickross.com/groups/clergy.html


http://joemygod.blogspot.com/search/label/This Week In Holy Crimes

 

[burt-oh-my!]

Right here in Ontario we have a mind-boggling injustice based on religion: the right of Roman Catholics to have their schools publicly finaced, to the exclusion of all others. idiotic.

 

[rld]

proof that religion does not make one a better person

crimes commited by religious leaders

http://www.rickross.com/groups/clergy.html


http://joemygod.blogspot.com/search/label/This Week In Holy Crimes

Logic is not your strongpoint is it?

If I produce a list of people, a really long list of of people, who are white and have committed terrible crimes, can I than conclude that being white makes one bad?

What you are promoting is a smear campaign based on anecdotal evidence, it is the worst kind of crap.

Please get back to us when you can show us two things:

1) real data that shows religious people are more likely or equally as likely to committ crimes that some control group--which would be tough because the vast majority of the world is religious; and

2) some explanation of the mechanism that makes religion a determinant in the likelihood of committing crimes.

It's actually a very subtle analysis that you are trying to sweep under the rug.

 

[canada-man]

it's is not a smear campaign religious leaders love to claim that non-believers are immoral and depraved who why shouldn't non believers sit be and be insulted?

 

[rld]

it's is not a smear campaign religious leaders love to claim that non-believers are immoral and depraved who why shouldn't non believers sit be and be insulted?

So one stupid offensive, illogical, inaccurate generalization deserves another?

Besides, you are focussed way too much on US evangelicals. There are plenty more religious leaders than that.

And it is a smear campaign when you take selective bad examples and apply to the whole group without evidence.

And it would be a smear campaign if a religious leader did (does) it to non-believers as well.

Is your argument now "religious leaders are so bad and so evil I want to be just like them"?

 

[canada-man]

God's Bigmouths
Men like Bishop Eddie Long are fouling the legacy of the civil rights movement.

By Christopher HitchensPosted Monday, Sept. 27, 2010, at 11:10 AM ET

Passing through Union Station in Washington, D.C., last week, I made my usual nod to the statue of A. Phillip Randolph. You can miss it if you are not looking for it, and it has been allowed to suffer defacement. (The sculpted pair of reading glasses held in the great man's hand was snapped off some years ago and was never replaced.) Randolph built a powerful trade union for black railroad workers and proposed the first march on Washington when Franklin Roosevelt was president. His role in the later civil rights movement was germinal and dynamic. But you never hear his name anymore, and it is not taught to schoolchildren. Nor is the name of Bayard Rustin, a charismatic black intellectual and pioneer of gay rights, who organized the March on Washington in 1963. Along with many other secular democratic heroes, Randolph and Rustin have been airbrushed from history. The easiest way to gain instant acceptance as a black "leader" these days is to shove the word Reverend in front of your name.

Or, if you are really greedy and ambitious, the word Bishop. Bishop Eddie Long of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Georgia preaches that Bayard Rustin was a vile sinner who suffered from the curable "disease" of homosexuality. I have a rule of thumb for such clerics and have never known it to fail: Set your watch and sit back, and pretty soon they will be found sprawling lustily on the floor of the men's room. It may be a bit early to claim the scalp of Eddie Long for this collection, but I doubt I shall have to withdraw. Here, after all, is what his friend the Rev. Timothy McDonald III, of the First Iconium Baptist Church (no less!), has to say: "This is the issue: how can you be against homosexuality and you are allegedly participating in it? That is the epitome of hypocrisy." Cynicism and naivete seem to coexist happily in this statement. The Rev. McDonald does not quite seem to believe the rather unimpressive denials issued by his richly draped brother in Christ. And he talks as if fevered denunciation of homosexuality has never before been an early warning of repressed desire.

One of his alleged partners in depravity may have been on the borderline of the age of consent, but otherwise I can't make myself care about whether the self-anointed Bish was rogering his flock. What concerns me isn't even the laughable obviousness of his cupidity: the jewels and gold chains and limos and bodyguards. This is all a familiar part of the tawdry business of "Churchianity" now finding loopholes for the rich and venal at a well-upholstered religious establishment somewhere near you. No, what offends me is that Long was able to get four presidents of the United States to attend his opulent circus for the funeral of Coretta Scott King in 2006. What a steep and awful decline from the mule cart that carried her husband's coffin in 1968. And the decline can be measured out in dog collars, from the Rev. Jesse Jackson all the way down to the Rev. Al Sharpton and the venomous Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Many other charlatans have benefited from the clerical racket, and the most notorious of them—Jerry Falwell, Ted Haggard, Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart—have been white. But there is something especially horrible about the way in which the black pulpit gets a sort of free pass, almost as if white society has assured itself that black Americans just love them some preaching. In this fog of ethnic condescension, it is much easier for mountebanks and demagogues to get away with it.

It is not amazing to me that the Bish is still standing and getting moist applause from the pews after the testimony of his boys brigade of LongFellows. (What the hell is that name, if not a giveaway?) It is amazing that he is still around after the ceaseless exposure of his personal finances. What I should like to know is this: How much of that funding and expenditure has been tax-deductible or written off as "charitable"? In a time of widespread discussion of the spread of the tax burden, why is it never proposed that the vast sums raised by the churches be subject to the scrutiny of the IRS? And still another question: In 2006, Long's church received about $1 million of U.S. taxpayers' money from the "faith-based initiative" of the George W. Bush administration. It was suggested at the time that this might be a quid pro quo for the Bish's militant stand against gay marriage and other homosexual abominations. If so, it would make my follow-up question even more amusing: How did Long and his young friends, "bonded" as they were in strong male "covenants," actually spend our cash?

To those young friends, then, "Thank you all very much for coming out"—as Sen. Larry Craig actually did say at the opening of his own post-men's-room press conference. The day can't be far off when Long follows the traditional script and starts to yowl for prayer and repentance. And this would all be the greatest fun if it didn't also involve the degradation of the King family and the steady erosion of the real memory of the civil rights movement, which is not safe when left in the keeping of God's bigmouths and tree-shakers.

http://www.slate.com/id/2268796/

 

[rld]

I didn't think you had the chops to actually step up to the questions. Just found yourself some more cutting and pasting to do. Impressive.

 

[luckyjackson]

So one stupid offensive, illogical, inaccurate generalization deserves another?

Whoa whoa whoa. You know which board you're on right?

 

[Tokyo Heights]

Reliigons fail when people alter the norms of their religion as per their own custom made garment, becomes Self Proclaimed Leaders, people of that particular or doom religion get back stabbing their own co-religionist, jealousies prevail to an extent of hurting each other and just play Kitchen Politics then those relgion are bound to fail, and their people to suffer!~
Lord give some sense to those evil minds who ruins religions all saints and religions are good, but we the people who have brought corruption to religions!

 

[canada-man]

Christopher Hitchens playing "What if...?" with a religious radio show host.

part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Eu9HNjJ84A

part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AX1CswHCkA


Hitchens Schools Rabbi on Issue of Genital Mutilation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U93ZiR692l4

 

[rama putri]

Religion doesn't fail. Humans sometimes fail. God Bless.

What he said.

 

[rama putri]

So one stupid offensive, illogical, inaccurate generalization deserves another?

Religious discrimination is the new discrimination. To say all religious types are alike is akin to saying all blacks/Jews/Japs/women/Muslims etc... are alike and are to be feared. That said, religious types are not immune to discriminating either. But when there is a debate based on juvenile and ignorant language on both sides, like what is normal on TERB, TERBites should just stick to SP reviews and forget this stuff. It's too advanced for most here.

Besides, you are focused way too much on US evangelicals. There are plenty more religious leaders than that.

Atheists frequently use them for arguments against religion. Like neo-cons use al-Queda against Islam. It's the same thing.

And it is a smear campaign when you take selective bad examples and apply to the whole group without evidence.

Atheists are humans too, and subject to error, though most think they are God-like and fool proof, ironically. It's pretty funny, if one thinks about this. Christopher Hitchens is a prime example.

And it would be a smear campaign if a religious leader did (does) it to non-believers as well.

Agreed.

Is your argument now "religious leaders are so bad and so evil I want to be just like them"?

Victims frequently become the oppressors given the opportunity. Again, they are human and flawed that way. Just ask God.

 

[canada-man]

 

[rama putri]

So religion equals child abuse? Is that really where you want to take your argument?

 

[canada-man]

So religion equals child abuse? Is that really where you want to take your argument?

we keep porn, prostitution, sex, politics, alcohol away from children why should religion get a free pass?

 

[Tokyo Heights]

Because we the human race tries to accustom or tailor the norms of religion according to our needs &try to change it according to his or her requirements and do not follow the right path shown to us by our respective religions!! All religions in the world are good, no religion teaches any bad thing, has always advised its followers to do good deeds, speak good words, and to do good things in their lives, but we are distracted to this worldly affairs of corruption & follow deceit in our lives which ultimately fails the norms and principles of any religion!! Sad but unfortunate!

 

[Mencken]

Because we the human race tries to accustom or tailor the norms of religion according to our needs &try to change it according to his or her requirements and do not follow the right path shown to us by our respective religions!! All religions in the world are good, no religion teaches any bad thing, has always advised its followers to do good deeds, speak good words, and to do good things in their lives, but we are distracted to this worldly affairs of corruption & follow deceit in our lives which ultimately fails the norms and principles of any religion!! Sad but unfortunate!

Nice if it were true. But religions I know promote all kinds of bad things. And the advice to followers can be just as bad.
Along with lots of good stuff too.

I have no idea where the balance lies...negative or positive.

 

[canada-man]

A mother against religious indoctrination of her children in school

A girl has a nervous breakdown due to her religious upbringing.
This is proof that brainwashing your children to be terrified of a vindictive jealous petty bastard in the sky can have dire consequences. It's kinda like working for a tyrannical,unreasonable delusional,sadistic boss. Sooner or later, you gotta quit so you don't kill anyone or yourself.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVE8UIO5pOk